Posted
by
Unknown Lameron Wednesday June 27, 2012 @12:23PM
from the take-that-evildoer dept.

tekgoblin writes with an excerpt from TekGoblin: "The founders of The Pirate Bay have been hit with a bunch of punishments and other measures to prevent them from continuing. However Fredrik Neij was just fined by the Stockholm District court another 500,000 Swedish kronor ($70,690 US). Fredrik Neij and Gorrfrid Scatholm both had been banned from operating the site but Neij had been recently found still involved with the site. Neij already owes around 10.6 million."

Exactly, its a slap on the wrist. Especially considering the 10s of billions of dollars he costs the entertainment industry daily. The pirate bay has taken to promoting indie (non-industry-approved) artists, further cutting into socially guaranteed profits. Someone needs to be held responsible for this costly outrage!

Exactly, its a slap on the wrist. Especially considering the 10s of billions of dollars he costs the entertainment industry daily. The pirate bay has taken to promoting indie (non-industry-approved) artists, further cutting into socially guaranteed profits. Someone needs to be held responsible for this costly outrage!

Sarcasm may seem funny, but under the circumstances, it is counter productive, as it gives the (socially deficient and sarcasm impaired) politicians the impression that some part of the population agrees with the content usurpers, and thus they should side with the plaintiffs.

If you mean many people, percentage wise, you couldn't be more wrong. Less than 25% of the public view downloading music as illegal, and to be fair NONE should. The recording industry is entirely fabricated. Artists get next to nothing out of it and have to tour to make money.

If you mean many people, percentage wise, you couldn't be more wrong. Less than 25% of the public view downloading music as illegal, and to be fair NONE should. The recording industry is entirely fabricated. Artists get next to nothing out of it and have to tour to make money.

If you feel like the penalties for infringement are too steep, I could back you up.If you feel like the tactics the RIAA and others have used to pursue infringers are deplorable, I could back you up.If you feel like the actual revenue loss due to piracy is grossly overstated, I could back you up.

But the feeling of entitlement, that you should be able to grab whatever is produced at no cost to yourself, regardless of what justification you use.... that one I can't go with you on.

Once produced, if the cost to replicate is close enough to zero that it doesn't matter, what do you judge to be the correct value? I hope you pay that toward every open source product you've ever used or you are your own hypocrite.

There's a hole in that thought process -- developers of an open source product have chosen of their own free will to allow myself and others to download their works free of charge. Hypocritical would be to condemn piracy while using GPL code in my closed source product.

"But the feeling of entitlement, that you should be able to grab whatever is produced at no cost to yourself, regardless of what justification you use.... that one I can't go with you on."

I feel that "I have a right to profit off of my work, via a government enforced monopoly on its use" is a far worse idea of entitlement than anything pirates are physically capable of.

I would argue that the principle is sound, the current implementation is not. I'd personally like to return to the 14 years, renew once for 14 more system, and I believe that would be preferable to complete abolishment of copyright.

Very many people agree that the Pirate Bay is an organized copyright thief. That's a simple fact.

Now, that's not true on Slashdot, but Slashdot is not a fair representation of the general population.

I know I will get lots of hate mail for this, but only people who fail to understand the epic fail that is copyright, and all of the issues surrounding it, think that copyright is a good idea. Copyright is bad for society. It hurts our economy. It hurts our standard of living, and unjustly puts large amounts of money into the pockets of middlemen who are barely more than thieves themselves. Perhaps I need to run for congress myself to get at least one voice of reason into the discussion because for some reason, those in office go a long way to listen only to those very same middlemen who are making their society worse any time they can make a buck doing it.

Artists don't need monetary incentive to create great works, they need food and shelter and the tools of the trade. The rest they do themselves. Shakespeare didn't create his great works because he was trying to become rich and famous, he did it because he loved his work. Van Gogh was a lunatic. History is littered with very talented artists who never made much money, But created vast cultural wealth for society, for no other reason than "They could". Many of today's modern music artists create compelling works, but they would have done it anyway, with or without the fortune. Most artists have a job that pays their bills and they create art on the side as a hobby. There is a vast and varied pool of independent artists, some of whom are as talented as today's top artists. The only reason you don't know who they are is because those very same middlemen spend most of the artists money to advertise the few works they choose, and ignore the rest. That advertising is designed to put your focus on the advertised works, and take the focos away from the independent works. They do this, not because its good for the artist (It ensures most artists never see a dime from album sales). They do it to maximize their own revenues (Which are largely driven by income on their advertising subsidiaries).

Copyright itself isn't a bad idea, but its current implimentation is. For one thing, the length. There's no reason whatever for Jimi Hendrix music to not be in the public domain -- he's dead, and there's no way to entice him to make any more music. Twenty years isn't unreasonable.

Having such a concept as noncommercial infringement is also a bad idea. Emailing you a copy of a movie should not be illegal and nobody should be able to sue me for it, but if I charge you for a copy of the movie someone else made,

Many people believing many things does not make them true. Personally, I'm waiting to figure out a way to get policies based on facts, rather than who screams the loudest, but I suppose that is not likely to ever happen as long as the majority prefers to remain ignorant.

I know it's fun to get stuff for free (I do it myself), but authors still deserve to be paid. Some of ye appear to say they do not (which is why you oppose copyright). I guess ye have no objections if I lay you off, and send the job to poor people in China/India. After all it is for the "good of society" that jobs go to those who need them the most. Those citizens need the jobs more than us rich Americans.

Like the authors, you can go earn your money some other way. (Enjoy!) BTW I notice almost none of

"I know it's fun to get stuff for free (I do it myself), but authors still deserve to be paid. Some of ye appear to say they do not (which is why you oppose copyright)."
So you don't accept the clearly logical slashdot argument that because artists make too little money from selling what they make, that we should take steps to insure that "too little" amount plummets to zero?

Except there have been several examples of people who cut out the middle man and offered up their music - either for whatever the consumer decided to pay (trent resnor comes to mind) or free while asking for a donation...and did far better than they would have.

Not all people are opposed to compensating artists. In fact, I'd go out on a limb and say while the majority of people no longer view copyright infringement as 'wrong' the majority of people WOULD compensate an artist for their work if a reasonable,

As a matter of fact, the jobs do get moved to China and India so it's time the monopoly rights industries join in and smell the roses. If we're going to have a market economy based on competition that applies to everyone and nobody gets a monopoly, especially as the prevalence of rentseeking monopolists are part of the reason western workers are expensive. Paying for patents and copyrights isn't free, and the extra costs means jobs lost in other economic sectors.

I notice almost none of ye suggested an alternate method for authors to get paid for their books, songs, movies. MY proposal is that we treat them the same way we do other creative types: Programmers, engineers. Give the authors an hourly wage upfront.

Who's going to pay them the wage, and without the author having a copyright, why would a publisher pay them the wage, and once the first publisher published, what would keep all the other publishers from also publishing that work?

True, it's "only" around $1.5 million that he owes right now. Still, it's a valid point, and the problem with levying such exorbitant fines. If I were fined $1.5 million for something, at that point, no amount of additional fines would ever make a difference in my activities. Whether it's $1.5 million or $1.5 billion, I know I'm never going to pay it off, so what difference does it make? If I were fined $1.5 million for something, I would pretty much take it as free license to do whatever I want from that point forward with no concern whatsoever for monetary penalties.

1.5 million you could pay back if you had a decent enough job. 100k a year minus 50k for 30 years. And you'd still collect pension benefits as though you had 100k.

That's manageable for a normal person. 1.5 billion... not so much.

Also, living with family is risky, because any assets you get in inheritance will still be claimed, and any needs you have as you get older will not be covered if your siblings/relatives can't, and you won't have any pension except government security.

uh.. if you're 34 years old you have two choices. Leech off relatives for the next 30 years. Or work somewhere for the next 31 years until retirement, and what lifestyles would you have in either case.

Or, you just try to harm for the next 30 years those companies who imposed the fine with their immoral lawsuits, invent and promote new p2p technology and generally try to make sure these companies loose billions after billions.

At least that's what I would do if somebody told me to pay 1.5 million dollars for maintaining a site with links to files that could be used to obtain potentially copyright infringing content.

Nope... Here in sweden, where he's also from, you pay into an pensions-fund that you save for yourself. Usually when you get a job the company is allowed to pay X amount of money per year into your fund and if you switch jobs you still keep that money..

Also, we get a pension from the goverment but this you will only survive without anything extra really..

Another thing we have here in sweden is that you can file for a sort of debt cleanup... this is only for people that will never be able to pay off the mone

They shouldn't, at least not from their employers. Why would you want to be trapped in one job for your whole life?

Depends where you live. You can transfer pensions between employers here. Some places have government 'earned pensions' where you pay into the government pension system and the more money you paid in the more you collect when you retire.

Those are still pensions.

The other thing that happens here is that you can collect a pension when you retire from all of your past employers. So if you worked for 10 employers you get 10 pension cheques.

If you're going to throw fines you'll never be able to collect, might as well put it in the billions, and then blame him for the economy crashing.

They are already blaming piracy for crashing the economy. Hell, after 9/11, they called pirates terrorists who were bent on destroying our way of life. Apparently, when you download music, you're downloading terrorism. As for the site going down... there's already DHT and hundreds of other trackers up there. People will simply migrate to other services. They could scream about how they're going to give people trillion dollar fines and 300 years in the electric chair for downloading, but there's billions of people doing it and only thousands of people trying to enforce a law they crafted themselves. They'd have to co-opt and topple entire governments to get what they want, and even at that... the statistics are not kind.

The only way for them to have any effect on piracy is with high profile legal cases that get lots of press coverage so people think "boy, I don't want to be that guy." It's the same reason the Lottery is so popular: People suck at math, and if they hear about something a lot, they'll change their behavior... because critical thinking is hard, and following the herd is easy.

The only way for them to have any effect on piracy is with high profile legal cases that get lots of press coverage so people think "boy, I don't want to be that guy." It's the same reason the Lottery is so popular: People suck at math, and if they hear about something a lot, they'll change their behavior... because critical thinking is hard, and following the herd is easy.

I'm not so sure about that. If people are inclined to think 'It'll happen to me!' about winning the lottery, I expect they'll also thi

This is the first time I've posted it. Usually I'm on the side of NOT sending people $5000 extortion letters, or fining Jamie Thomas 10 million dollars.

BUT these guys are different. They are the modern equivalent of VHS or DVD copiers and profiting from the action. They deserve to be fined, just as a speeder going over 65 mph deserved to get a ticket. If you don't like it then change the law.

YOU on the other hand seem to think Authors deserve NO PAY for the work they perform (that all their books, movie

People who obstruct traffic in the left hand lane or drive too slowly also deserve tickets, if your reasoning holds up. Good luck with that happening.

What is legally correct is not necessarily morally or even ethically sound. And you can always make laws, they don't mean they will achieve what they aim to achieve. For instance, the patent system these days.

We all state that authors and such deserve an income. I agree that I don't want to keep them from making an income for something I want to see.

However, people also make choices about what they do that also involves their interest and enjoyment. I enjoy playing video games, but its unlikely that anyone is going to pay me to play them, even if it is entertaining to watch (just ask South Korea). I don't deserve to get paid for what I want to do, people get paid for what they provide that others need. I want to try my hand at pro gaming, I have that option. I also have the option to make no money and starve.

If music and movies are needed and enjoyable, they will be paid for somehow. I am not worried about the end of music or movies or content. As for the music industry? Their job is to provide a service, and it appears that their distribution service is now redundant. If my job became redundant, I'd be laid off without so much as a bit of sadness on the part of the corporation. I don't see why I need to change my habits so that content businesses can continue to be paid when they should be laid off. Call me when I have guaranteed employment in the career of my choice and can make good money at it.

Certainly until music company execs, actors and rock stars stop making millions, I have zero pity for them. Call me when they really are in any danger of anything approaching hardship. As for everyone else, including indie musicians or actors, they are in a business just like I am. If they want to get paid, they need to figure out how to provide it in this shitty world of globalization and outsourcing, just like I have to. If you want to support them, I am 100% for it. Just don't make me pay for it with craptastic legislation.

YOU on the other hand seem to think Authors deserve NO PAY for the work they perform (that all their books, movies should be free for us). That makes no logical sense. It's equivalent to a boss that makes you work all week, fires you, and then doesn't pay you any wages.

You misunderstand the underlying principles involved. The disagreement has nothing to do with, should the artists get compensated or not, the argument should be framed as what is in societies best interests. Individual interests *must* take a back seat to the good of society. Period. So, re-frame the question as "What is the best alternative for society?" The answer is not what we have now, copyright is an abysmal failure, and ends up harming society far more than having nothing at all. Remember that there

>>>Individual interests *must* take a back seat to the good of society. Period.

So you have no objections if I lay you off, and send the job to China and India. After all they are MUCH poorer than we are, and it is for the "good of society" that jobs go to those who need them the most. China/India citizens clearly need the jobs more than us rich Americans. Like the authors, you can go earn your money some other way. (Enjoy!)

BTW I notice you didn't suggest an alternate method for authors to get p

>Individual interests *must* take a back seat to the good of society. Period

Nope. It is not even good for society for individual interests to always take a back seat to the good of the society and it is certainly not always in the best interests of the individuals.

You could say it is best for society to have a balance between societal and individual interests but this means re-framing the question inevitably involves how much is fair for whom.

Wow, that is some of the most disingenuous and circular logic i have seen. I understood what you were trying to say, but a better way to phrase it would have been: Society cannot always be trusted to decide what is in its own best interests, and subjugating citizens to the "will of society" is inherently dangerous, as it allows the majority to persecute a minority. This is not in societies best interest, and if the society always acted in its own best interest, it wouldn't happen. In short, smart people in

The pirate bay didn't even make enough money from Ad revenue to pay for a single persons living wage in sweden. It had something like 20,000 kronors on hand after server expenses and that money was ear-marked for hardware upgrades needed just to keep the site running. Up until very shortly before the trial the pirate bay was a LOSS generating activity for those involved.

it's one thing to download a song or movie, say "That was crap", and erase it. It's another thing to actively copy millions of them, or assist others to do it, and distribute those copies to other people.

Only the original author(s) have the right to copy their creation. Maybe that law is unjust and needs to be changed (like downsizing the 110 year span to 20 years), but for now that is the law and these guys are clearly violating it.

They might deserve it but telling it's all of their fault is not true at all. I feel like the industry didn't ask important questions like "why is my product getting pirated ? " and "how can I stop piracy ?". Never in my life I never heard of any of these types of questions from these guys...ever. I don't think I ever will too since those same guys are just penalizing folks with millions of dollars (or Knonor ?). Nope, instead of putting ressource, time and money on the origin and source of the problem, the

Fuck the law, there shouldn't be that law, the gov't shouldn't be allowed to pass laws that protect any specific business model, any specific business, any specific individual from other individuals in business.

Gov't is the culprit here, sure, there is a law, but it is an unjust law. Copyright and patent laws are unjust and every time anybody is in jury and there is government on one side and an individual on the other side the jury must nullify the law. Yes, the law is broken, no, it shouldn't exist.

Fuck the law, there shouldn't be that law, the gov't shouldn't be allowed to pass laws that protect any specific business model, any specific business, any specific individual from other individuals in business.

Gov't is the culprit here, sure, there is a law, but it is an unjust law. Copyright and patent laws are unjust and every time anybody is in jury and there is government on one side and an individual on the other side the jury must nullify the law. Yes, the law is broken, no, it shouldn't exist.

There is no problem with parasites. You are looking at it from the wrong perspective, neither you, no government it looks like are able to understand a very simple thing: nobody in business should be protected, even when one business steals from another, if the result is a cheaper, better product, then the customers win.

We don't need to care about HOW specifically anybody provides us with goods and services, the people who want to make money will make it their business to ensure that they have the advantage

That's nonsense. The second-best implementation will always kick the crap out of the best implementation if priced sufficiently lower.

- you maybe 100% right in THIS, but you are 100% wrong in this:

We need copyright and patent law. But it does need to be made more fair.

It's OK if somebody gets crashed because they couldn't understand that instead of going for perfection in product development, they should have gone to the market sooner, maybe with a product that is not as ideal, but it would sell and it would sell for less, because there is less money was spent developing it.

Make some more money over time and improve your product. You are making a mistake equating the best quality product with the best produ

I wonder if you understand how copyright fails academia? The real parasites are publishers such as Elsevier. We write and publish papers describing our research. We are expected to do so as part of a university job. In exchange for the privilege of publication in a recognized journal, publishers insist we give away our copyrights. We get no percentage, no flat fee, no co-ownership of the copyright, nothing at all from them. You might think they at least do some editing work, but no. The job of decid

though cultural professional("the establishment") lobbying is trying to prove that copyright is a civil right, quite successfully too. however, copyright needs essentially endless involvement from government(aka "authority") limiting what people are allowed to do.

the fines are ridiculous - he's just going to live on welfare and do untaxed work. what's more ridiculous is that he could have gotten away with less financial penalties for combined manslaughter and a bank robb

Copyright is not a right at all. It's a privilege granted by "the people" to the copyright holder. Do you think "the people" extended copyrights? No, that was lobbyists and our so-called representatives. If people are being abused by a law created by people they feel do not represent them how do you expect them to have any respect for that law at all? Especially when that law isn't protecting anyone's natural rights...

>>>Women have a natural right not to be raped. [Wages/salary] are not a right at all. It's a privilege granted by "the people" to the laborer.

Fixed that for you.Just wanted to clarify where you stand on this issue - that you don't think authors, movie directors, actors don't deserve to be paid for their labor. Because if there's NO copyright, and everything is free to download through Piratebay, then that's exactly what will happen. No money for the book, song, movie creators.

Artists deserve to be paid. They are not being paid under the current system, and they would arguably make *more* under a "copyright doesn't exist, pirate whatever you want" system.

Why?

Artists do *not* get paid properly for recordings. Seriously. Your album can go multi-platinum, and you still will see *maybe* a few cents on each album. Often less - Hollywood accounting means that you'll quite often see *nothing*. At that point, it doesn't matter whether people pay for

"They are not being paid under the current system, and they would arguably make *more* under a "copyright doesn't exist, pirate whatever you want" system."

And arguably, they'd make far less.

That turns your recordings into advertisements for your concerts. Which means you *want* them spread as far as they can - you *want* people to pirate your music, because that means more people are likely to shell out $$ for tickets, and t-shirts, and other merchandise.

With the premise that only music that can be performed in concert halls AND bring in enough concertgoers is deserving of being made.

Seems correct. You can get people to go to a concert for anything - look at all the dubstep musicians who show up, press a few buttons on a computer, and bam. Music.

If you can't get people to come to your concert, the only reason is because nobody likes your music.

And what about movies?

Movies seem to be doing fine, despite all of Hollywood's claims to the contrary. It helps that they already make most of their money from concert-like theatrical experiences you cannot recreate at home. Also known as movie theaters. Home VHS/DVD/B

Stop being stupid! That was not about race, and you know it! That was a comment about civil disobedience. Plenty of civil disobedience had nothing to do with race. Piracy is on the same level as draft dodging during the Vietnam War, or joining a union in the days when that was illegal. With Vietnam as the goad, we broke the draft. We should be grateful to everyone who risked imprisonment and injury to end the draft.

Time and time and time again, we've said that copyright infringement is not stealing.

>>>Do you really not understand that stealing and copyright infringement are different? I think you do. Why do you keep trying to equate them?

Why do YOU not read my original post where I VERY clearly stated copyright law needs to be changed? Funny how you skipped over that. At the same time I want people like Gene Roddenberry and J.Michale Straczynski to be rewarded for their works, not left penniless because Star Trek & Babylon5 are handed-away for free via piratebay.

> It's another thing to actively copy millions of them, or assist others to do it, and distribute those copies to other people.

I saw part of a documentary with the PirateBay guys in it. Their attitude was very much along the lines of: "If your stuff is getting pirated, too bad for you; find a different way to make money." They were completely unapologetic about piracy. They might as well have said, "You can't stop us and might makes right".

As far as I can tell the only use or threat of force is coming from those supporting copyright in this case. The government in this instance.

Copyright is really not a right, it is depriving the rest of society of the right to copy. I personally think that if the scope and length of this monopoly was lower it might be morally acceptable, but 100 years is surely not.

I hear the argument a lot from pirates that copyright is immoral because it is so long. So... why don't they only pirate things which are (say) 20 years old or more? Because they aren't thinking critically, they are just rationalizing their behavior. They want something, have the power to take it, and so they take it. Everything else is just to help them sleep at night.

The pirates behavior is a social problem. It shouldn't be a legal one. The use of force against them is completely unjustified and immoral.

The progress of technology has made the artificial scarcity model completely unworkable. Adapt or die is the only reasonable position to take. Trying to stop the forces of history with legislation just makes you backwards.

Your.sig reveals the flaws in your thinking better than your comment above, but it is of the same kind.

You can not compare one with the other. Have you failed to notice how the content industry is behind all the anti-piracy propaganda, while authors and musicians are mostly busy doing what they've always done?

What needs changing is not only the law, but also the content distribution system. Once the authors get more than a couple cents from that CD that I didn't buy, we can talk about unjust laws and author rights, deal?

There's a lot of truth in your first paragraph, but it falls short of the whole truth. The various industry associations are mainly representing the top 1% of authors. For the european countries, with its collecting agencies for public performances, most of the money goes to the top artists as well, so much that artists have begun to leave those associations because they don't see their advantage anymore.

So yes, the RIAA/MPAA does work for the artists - as well as the producers, distributors and a dozen oth

Not Hollywood but the record companies recently got punished for owing over 100 million in unpaid royalties to singers. The various CRIA-affiliated companies were using the songs on Greatest Hits CDs and not paying for them. "They deserve it".

"It's one thing to download a song or movie, say "That was crap", and erase it. It's another thing to actively copy millions of them, or assist others to do it, and distribute those copies to other people."

For money. Pirate Bay is a bunch of people who wanted to make money from selling movies, but don't know how to make the movies themself.